by Trista Shaye
At the center of the cavern, just ahead of them, sat an older looking troll with less bright hues and a deep set face. He had what looked to be a beard and his left hand held a tall staff with a sharpened rock at the end. He was the only troll not making a fuss. He just sat there and set his steady gaze upon the group with something in his eyes that Diana couldn’t quite make out. She wasn’t sure if he was angry they were there, happy, or all together uninterested. She could now also see the dark ooze that was clinging to where his right arm used to be and where his feet and lower legs must have been once before. She doubted he could move at all anymore.
Diana cringed as the noise didn’t decrease but seemed to grow even louder as time passed. Her hands were pressed hard to her head and she was beginning to feel like darting out of the room and back up the stone stairs the way they had come to save herself the pain that was starting to nibble at her skull.
“Kumdrum!” the elder chief abruptly bellowed and pounded the end of his staff on the ground.
The noise ceased altogether and the generals sat back down, sending dirty looks towards the gnome in particular. But Matilda took it like the warrior she was and simply kept her eyes straight ahead, pushing down all impulse to make a face at the rowdy crowd.
“Kumdrum,” the chief said a second time and pounded the staff a little lighter. “Peace.”
Silence filled the space and slowly, Diana lowered her hands and cut her gaze about, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do or who was supposed to speak first.
Just as she was about to open her mouth to break the tense quiet, the ancient troll began,“I am Rolkin, leader and chief of The Marsh and troll kind.” He swept his staff wide in an encompassing gesture, “Welcome.”
Diana followed Matilda’s lead a half second later as the gnome bowed her head in respect, and Kendel followed after them both.
“My son, Shaarg, you have met. He told me you are visitors to our land and mean us no harm.” He eyed Matilda and noted she had no weapons on her person. “But we shall be the judge of that.”
The rowdy five began to chant to each other and pound the ground with their mighty fists. Diana lost her balance and staggered a bit to regain her footing. Rolkin waved the trolls off and they stopped their beating of the rock floor with agitated grunts.
“My son said there was one who understood magic and he was the same who used magic to take the color straight from him.”
Kendel gulped but stepped forward, raising his hand slightly. “Hi, that’s me. Kendel, sir.”
“Kendel.” Rolkin breathed out his name as if tasting the sound of it. “An odd name, but we know not the ways of wizards and mages. You are one, you say. You look like one, and smell like one.”
Kendel nodded, looking over his shoulder to discreetly smell himself. He thought he smelled like bog, but what did he know?
“And you are a fairy girl from the realm all realms surround,” the chief continued, shifting his gaze from the mage to Diana. “The Magic Vale.”
“Yes, sir,” Diana said, also stepping forward. She was eager to learn what they could and maybe see if they could help the poor fellow, he looked rather bad off.
“You’re a secretive lot, you fairies. You stay in your realm and never come out.” He tilted his head to one side and leaned into his staff. “Until now.”
“Yes, sir,” she again quickly replied.
“Why?” He leaned back in his chair and seemed truly curious. “Why now do you break through the borders of your own realm and those of others so uncharacteristically?”
Diana took a deep breath, she needed to make sure she communicated this clearly enough. “Well, sir, because we too have felt the power of the wizard in our own realm. The same wizard that has been destroying your land, has planted seeds of evil magic in my realm to do the same. He wants not just this place, but every realm.”
Rolkin nodded. “We know of his plan to take over all the realms, he told us as much.”
“Then you know it is not only The Magic Vale, but also The Garden Glade that has been seeing the signs of this destruction. I would not be surprised if next he were to show up in The Dappled Peaks, for surely that is where he intends to strike next. It is the only realm left, if not his own,” Diana declared, passionate in her quest for restoration.
“No.” Rolkin blinked slowly, and Diana thought he aged before her very eyes. “He has already visited that place.”
“How do you know this?” Diana asked, then added quickly, so she wouldn’t sound rude, “we are hunting him, tracking him down. We intend to fix what he has done. We mean to cleanse your realm and our own. Any council as to where he might be next, or where he has been, is greatly appreciated.”
“Indeed.” Rolkin seemed to know all this already, but she wasn’t sure how. Shaarg hadn’t told him all of that earlier, had he?
“I am consumed by the dark magic that consumes our land. Little by little, the spell leaches my life away and slowly it takes my body with it.” He tried to raise his right arm so they could better see it, but it drained him too much and he dropped it swiftly.
Diana swallowed hard, feeling a lump forming in her throat. She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to promise she could help heal him, that he would be alright. But she honestly didn’t know if that was true.
“The spell on this land is not a very complicated one, not in nature or theory, to begin with. But it has been twisted and manipulated for a certain result, causing more complication. The spell that holds your realms is of ancient magic, written down and more involved, but it follows rules.”
“Yes.” Kendel nodded. “That is true, more or less. Complex spells and very powerful at that. Especially when keeping with the rules.”
“The rules of magic.” nodded Rolkin. “They govern us all whether we know it or not. All our realms are filled with magic, but only the wizards learned how to harness it, learned its names and unraveled its characteristics. They learned the written spells and from them, grew to know many more.”
Kendel nodded again, surprised the troll knew all of this but feeling excited to share the same knowledge with someone again after such a long time of being away from his own realm and those who understood how magic worked and what magic was.
“And this is why I know the wizard has been to the dragons already,” Rolkin explained his line of thoughts and words. “He took a simple spell over the land and linked a life to it, something far more advanced. He broke the most important rule of all basic magic.”
“He broke rule one.” Kendel gasped in shock, wondering how he hadn’t noticed this important piece of information until it was mentioned just now. “My master drilled that rule into my head like no other.” He closed his eyes and began to recite: “Rule one; forget it not and hold it close, life and death are in your hands and meddle not in the affairs of enchantment. All things have a flow of life to them, a flow of magic. Rule one, do not sway the flow of life lest you break the flow of magic and cast darkness over all until nothing shall flow and time itself shall stop.”
The mage opened his eyes and saw Rolkin nodding slowly. “He has interfered in the flow of life. He has broken the flow of magic.”
“But …” Kendel was breathless and he felt afraid again, but not like before. He wasn’t afraid of adventures and inconsequential things, but of heavy things that squeezed his heart. “That means time will stop. Nothing can be fixed once that happens, nothing can be reversed.”
“He seeks to stop time and all things once he has destroyed each realm. He seeks to be most powerful. He seeks to be the Gilded Mage.” Rolkin let the heavy words fall, though only Kendel felt them in full. To Diana and Matilda it all sounded terrible and horrible, but they didn’t quite grasp the entirety of it.
“He can’t survive this,” Kendel reasoned, shaking his head. “The rules of magic also have counters, balances, and consequence
s. He will die for what he’s done.”
“Yes.” The troll chief nodded to the truth of the mage’s words. “Unless. Unless he has been to the dragons’ realm and is the possessor of dragon magic. Though I doubt the dragons would freely give this power to a wizard, he must have stolen it.”
“Would it be too much to ask for an explanation of some of this?” Diana broke into their tense conversation with a raised hand and confused expression.
“Dragon magic is the strongest form you can possess. It is gained by obtaining a magical object from a horde of treasure a dragon watches over. There is but one magically enchanted object in each horde, and it is hidden among thousands of other things. It is impossible to find unless a dragon gives it to you,” Kendel said in explanation.
“But Rolkin just said it was stolen,” Diana noted, still feeling quite lost.
“Yes. It’s only a theory, but they say you can study a dragon for a time, get something of his or hers and practice a discerning spell until you can simply read the dragon’s mind and question them or go into their horde when they are absent and use your spell over the horde to find the object. This type of thing is not allowed at Castle Majestic, it’s considered dark magic. Whoever this wizard is, he has broken more than one rule of magic and of leadership. He has no sense of care for anyone but himself it seems.”
“So, if he does have a dragon object, I mean dragon magic, then what does that mean?” Diana felt like she was pulling bark from a tree, one slow piece at a time. She still needed help putting it all together in her mind. She didn’t understand much of the ways of magic.
“It means he can defy rules, as he has, and nullify the consequence, at least for a time, or direct it at someone else.” Kendel sighed and looked at his fairy friend with a twisted expression. “Diana your plan is noble, to save these people and all our lands. But, Diana, you can’t. He’s the most powerful wizard in the realms, especially if he is the Gilded Mage, as I suspect and as Rolkin says he is trying to appear to be,” He shook his head sadly. “Diana, he’s unstoppable and at this point, seeing what he’s done and knowing what he plans, we’ll never be able to reason with him. We’ll never win.”
Sixteen
Diana left the chief’s den and found her way back up the stairs of the massive cavern. The sound of the bats’ heads turning and ears twitching could be heard as she came to the top step. She was about to walk down the passage towards the entrance where Shaarg had brought them in, but she saw another opening just a few feet to the right of it. Wondering vaguely where it went and honestly just wanting to get away from the rest of them to think about everything, she took the new passage. She had left feeling gloomy and rather disheartened. She didn’t know what they could do or how they would go about any of it and it seemed she had led them all here for nothing.
The mushrooms were thicker down this passage and she trailed her fingers through some as she passed, the luminous residue from their caps sticking to her fingers and glowing in the florescent light from above. She rubbed her hands together and the color spread till it covered the skin on both her hands. She decided not to touch anything else, lest she wind up with a glowing mustache by accident.
After she walked for quite some time, the passage opened up into a small oval cave with dripping stalactites falling from the ceiling toward a clear blue pool in the center of the floor. It was the clearest water she’d seen in the whole realm. Diana sat at the edge of the pool and dipped her feet into its shallows. It felt a little cold but also refreshing and it seemed so deep but also so clear.
She sat there in the cavern, slowly kicking her feet and thinking.
It was some time later that she heard footsteps coming down the passage toward her and she braced herself for a visit from whomever it was.
“Diana?” she heard Kendel say, as if asking to be let in.
“It is me,” she replied, quite halfheartedly.
He walked into the small place and came to sit beside the pool as well, peering into the water. “Clean water, huh. Nifty.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged, thinking she could say how cool and refreshing it was, but didn’t want to take the energy to do so.
“Just thinking?” he asked after a moment of silence had passed.
“Yeah,” she said again, splashing her feet a little and watching the ripples they created.
They sat in the quiet with the water trickling around Diana’s feet for a while longer until Diana finally sighed and made her mouth form the words she had repeated in her head at least five times, unable to actually speak them aloud until now.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you that night I broke you out of the cell. And …” she paused and cut a quick glance his way. “I’m sorry I called you lame.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “I had quite forgotten about that. It’s ok, I forgive you. I wouldn’t have believed me either and honestly, sometimes I feel a bit lame.”
“But you’re not,” Diana countered. “You can do all sorts of things and it’s really quite amazing.”
“If you say so.” The mage shrugged. “I suppose I’m pretty alright, sometimes.”
Diana rolled her eyes and they fell into silence until Diana, once again, pulled her words from her mouth like pulling candy from a child.
“And, I’m sorry I lied.”
Kendel looked up, rather taken aback. “When did you lie?”
She looked into the pool’s depths and began to spill her thoughts. As she told her story tears began to play at the edges of her eyes. “I said nothing bad ever happened in The Magic Vale, that everything was always perfect all the time. Well, something bad did happen, once. It happened to a little, little fairy when she was quite young.
“I didn’t always live in a tree on the ground by myself with only Trizet to keep me company and I didn’t always bring things back to the baker in exchange for food so I could eat. Once upon a time, I lived in a grand home in the upper branches, where only the most elite live. I had a mother and I had a father and several servants who made sure I was always on time for everything, or even early.” She paused and shook her head at the memory, it seemed like a dream almost or something she had conjured in her mind.
“What happened?” Kendel asked softly.
Diana breathed in deeply. “I don’t know. One day, I woke up without anyone calling my name and I was confused. I looked for someone in the house, but no one was there. I began to be afraid and I wandered out into the tree branches to look for my parents. I never found them.
“I stayed hidden in that house for about three moon cycles, no one came to find me and no one came to look. Eventually, some fairies came to clean and repair the few broken things of the house so they could let the new owners move in. I scared them half to death, but they never bothered to wonder how badly they scared me. No one ever bothered to see what I needed or who I was or what I would want.
“They realized I was all alone and I guess they took me to the council or something – that part is kind of fuzzy. They assumed I had whatever my parents did, whatever sickness or curse or whatever they chalked up their disappearance to be.
“I don’t really remember how I managed to find that hollow in the tree at the base of the city but I made it my home and I started going to school. At first I snuck in because some of the teachers were scared of me. One of them, retired now, stood up for me, saying that every young fairy deserved an education.
“I got a job with the baker and I even made some friends. And I forgot. I let myself forget about the bad thing that happened to me and I chose to only remember my little home, Trizet, and my life as it was. Mention of my past has always made me nervous because I think my subconscious didn’t want me to remember, I had buried it so deep.”
“What made you remember?” Kendel prompted after a moment.
“All of this,” she whispered, looking around her as tears slid silently dow
n her checks. “All the terror and all the darkness that’s happening now. It makes me feel like I felt then – helpless and afraid, so small and weak.” She shivered and hugged herself.
“I’m … I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say or what to do, he wasn’t used to comforting people and her story was quite sad. Nothing he could say could change the fact that she had been hurt and that people should have treated her differently, but they didn’t. She was very nice, he thought, for having been through all of that.
“That’s why we have to try,” she said and sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of one hand. “We have to try to stop him, Kendel, we can’t let everyone lose what I’ve already lost – their families and their homes, everything they know. No one should have to feel this way.”
“No, I suppose not. But I think we all do, at one time or another.” She gave him a questioning look. “You’re not alone Diana. We all feel small and weak sometimes, and I know many people who have lost things and people dear to them. You’re not odd, you’re normal, however awful normal may seem. For whatever reason, The Magic Vale seems to be the place that’s unusual, trying to make everything seem perfect and surreal. But that’s not how the world is. But, I am sorry,” he added at the end, thinking he did a terrible job of consoling her. “I am glad that you remembered, though, even if it’s hard. Because you know you had parents at one time, parents that loved you.”
“Didn’t you?” Diana asked, catching him off guard, “Or siblings? What was your family like?”
“No …” he stuttered. “I had parents and two siblings, but I never knew more about them than that. It’s an odd way of things at Castle Majestic. You’re never allowed to know who your blood family is, as we’re all considered family to one another. So you’re taken from your parents at a young age and brought up far from them. You might see them on occasion or every day, but you’d never know it.”